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Tuesday, 17 July 2012

78: Trick Cyclist

When Great Aunt Eunice died, she left
Malcolm a unicycle.

He hadn’t expected anything in her will and
in fact barely even remembered her. His
hazy memories of her all included an Astrakhan coat smelling of mothballs and coral
lipstick smudges on her teeth, bared as she loomed in for a kiss.

A battered, dusty box almost big enough for
a fridge-freezer was delivered to Malcolm’s flat. The edges were reinforced with ancient
sellotape, stickiness long gone. Malcolm
opened the box and it fell apart in his hands.
Inside was a unicycle, wrapped in oiled rags.

In the bottom of packaging was a black and
white photo. It showed a unicycle – this
very unicycle? – and a young woman, wearing a leotard and tights, with a
feathered headdress. She was outside a
circus tent, smiling shyly into the camera.
Malcolm looked at the photo, wondering who the woman was.

There was a knock at his door, and his
mother arrived carrying a second box. “This
is for you too,” she said. He opened it
and inside was the feathered headdress.

“Eunice always wanted you to have the bike
but I thought she’d really want the feathers to go with it,” said his
mother. “She loved it so much and when
you used to climb on it as a boy, she decided then one day it would be yours.”

“This woman is Great Aunt Eunice?” he
asked, pointing to the photo.

“Oh yes,” she said. “She was a bit of a star in her day. She travelled the world with that cycle,
performing in front of royalty more than once.
Broke her heart when she had to stop riding after an accident. She was never the same again, poor lamb.”

“And did I really used to ride it? I can’t remember it.”

“Well you wobbled a bit but you could go a
few pedals. She loved seeing you on
it. Try it?” she suggested.

Malcolm took the cycle and held one arm
steadying against the wall. He tucked
the seat into his groin, making him look like a human wheelbarrow, and put
first one then two feet on the pedals.
Maybe he had done it before after all.
They say you don’t forget.